Domestic Chores and Days Off

I’m a writer with a day job married to a musician with a day job. Free time for either of us is pretty rare.

However, because the organisation I work for has a flexi time system, it does mean that if I build up enough hours I can occasionally take a day off work without having to use annual leave. Such days are useful for doctor and dentist appointments, and such, but they are also useful for dealing with domestic chores that require being at home on a weekday. So I generally try and schedule as many such tasks as possible for these days off.

Friday this week was such a day, and although it was a completely unproductive writing day, on the domestic chores front we got quite a lot accomplished. First of all, we got the plumber round to replace the cracked plastic pipes on the side of the house that drain the water from the bath and the sink in the upstairs bathroom. Well, we thought the pipes were cracked. What we did not realise until the old pipes had been removed and the plumber showed them to us is that both of them had completely disintegrated on one side. Every time we’ve been running the water in the bathroom it must have been cascading down the side of the house. Just as well we got that fixed, then.

While we had the plumber we also had him plumb the American fridge freezer we bought when we moved into the house in September into the water supply. So our fridge now dispenses ice cubes and cold water. I’ve got disproportionately excited about this. All weekend I’ve been drinking lots of glasses of water, just to have an excuse to fill up a glass with ice and water from the fridge.

I also took the kittens to the vet to get neutered, since they have now reached five months and we cannot start letting our female felines outside until we can be assured they can’t get pregnant.

Alia in post-operative recovery

I didn’t think this would be too much of an ordeal. Our last pair of cats were both female, and we had to get them done. However, these new kittens have very different personalities than our old cats. For starters, they are a lot more intelligent. With our former cats (who admittedly inherited pedigree genes) all we had to do to get them to vet was get the cat box and leave it on the floor with the door open. The cats would think “ooh! Box!” and would promptly go in because they loved boxes. Then I’d shut the door on them, as they belatedly realised they’d been foiled again.

Not so with these cats. They have already learned to associate the box with unpleasantness and as soon as they saw it they were running to hide. I managed to grab one and shove her in the box, chased the second one for a while, but after catching her I opened the door to shove her in and the first one promptly escaped. Now I know the origin of that phrase “herding kittens”, used to describe the difficulty of getting a group of people in the same place at the same time.

Eventually I did manage to get both cats in the box but not without injury. They came home after their spaying op safe and well. Unfortunately we have to go through the same fiasco on Monday, as I have to take them back to the vet for a post-op check. And I don’t have the luxury of a day off on Monday – it’s back to work for me. Which means after leaving work early to dash home in time, I’m probably going to be chasing the kittens around the house in my work clothes. And I will have a limited amount of time to get them into the box.

I’m already dreading this task. At the very least, I think I shall dig out the gardening gloves before attempting it. Any suggestions from cat owners to get reluctant felines into the cat carrier are welcome…

Awww, your kitty is beautiful (and I love her name)! Glad it went well, & hoping for a quick recovery. My poor kitty (who died young a few years back) had an awful, traumatic recovery, so I’m always glad to hear when spaying goes well.